Chloe and I laid on the huge bean bag where she sleeps. It was dark and quiet. The last moments before sleep can feel like sleep, as big eyes make out the contours of the room. We looked in each other's eyes for a minute or more. That never happened before. I saw her trust and hope and joy for living. I hoped it never leaves.

Some people can't or won't look into your eyes. I started asking her to do it when I knew she wasn't listening to something important. Sometimes she'd wiggle for a long time before agreeing to look in my eyes. She knows there's no more screwing around when you're face-to-face and listening.

Through the gaze I saw a few of her usual twitches, leaping off toward some distraction, drama, obsession. This is a large part of being 2. Maybe lost adults are lost in the same ways. But she came back mid-twitch each time.

In the morning she blocked me from exit and demanded that I confirm I'm her daddy. I told her a few times that I'm 'like a daddy'. This time I said I'm a friend. I met her at a young age when words were dripping from her mouth and now they're pouring out. I doubt her daddy would teach her to read, or look in her eyes and see what I saw.

I kept thinking about the lame things that crush hearts and jade people to the world. I imagined her as a teen, and wondered about her gaze then, deep in the crucibles of life. I hope they never jade this graceful gaze of wonder and hope.

This video depicts a new kick-ass park a block from my house.
FUCK YEAH I'M HOLDING THE PROPERTY
I NEEDED SOME GOOD NEWS AND THERE IT IS

If they don't decide to change her treatment plan I'll probably need to arrange a get together with friends where we yell at stuff, set a bonfire of some sort, and consume alcoholic beverages. - you want an LJ, that's an LJ. pop in!

I boiled spent vaporizer grinds in butter and water, and made potent butter. This is a breakthrough because I wondered what to do with the spent grinds. Now I know it's fine to dig the vapor, and then boil into butter. Nothing's lost. No need to force the vapor when it's spent. I'm really, really happy that I quit smoking or reduced exposure to smoke by 50% or more likely more. My lungs are really happy also.

Spend $90 at Whole Foods, mostly on Alpen cereal and Cascade Fresh yogurt.

I got my tracks playing off my quadcore. Still lots of infrastructure toiling to get back online. Contemplating a "real" data service at $40/mo. Bleed me and leave my corpse. But they say there's no lengthy committment so why not give it a whirl? Still pulling like a 300 baud situation here with no reliability. I have what I believe is a sound implementation of e-friend activity trend sensing that I can customize per person (LJMindMap does this on the right panel for invited guests). The trick is in triggering and thresh-holds, and have a great opt-in strategy... I'm ready to burn rubber if only I had some reliable bandwidth. My initial tests strongly suggested bandwidth was the bottleneck. Probably not going to go cloud so let's get a bigger pipe. Theoretically could migrate phone to it and actually spend less. Waiting for a Google digital Skype solution that finally puts the knife into AT&T.

Put down $350 on 6 massages to re-structure my facia in 2009. This is working well enough to risk another $350.

The Amazon recruiter got a piece of my mind. I submitted at $46.20/hr, 10% gain over current job. Really that's probably selling my guys short but recruitment and interviews could change my mind. i_dread and others reminded me that my current job isn't a poke in the eye. There's lots to do and it's probably my job to do it. It's pretty wide-open and that's a rare thing. I belong in a classic writing role that a larger corporation can support, but I have a team that supports me, which counts for a lot. Still, harboring resentment toward my bad review in 2008, and craving another shot, I have to tango with the bull.

I finished The Passion of Ayn Rand. I also loaned The Fountainhead to Emily.

Got my first voice contact with someone seeking housing. Total miss but totally on right track.

Invented a new simple metric to tell me over time if I'm slowly drowning: the Scariest Net Liquid Asset Balance manual observation field.

My balance swings each month and this will peg me at the worst-case so I can determine if I'm at risk or sinking. I auto-pay my 401k loan-to-self, and estimate remaining debt based on time since initiation.

Finally got programmable heat in this room that doesn't stink.

Overall, feeling a little bit of an uptick in cracking a lot of screwed up stuff that has been all clogged up for a while. Back on track?

Palin book tour: she couldn’t stay for fans who waited in rain/cold all day?

Goin rock star is more like it. oligarcy tool.

In my job, I hang around an office and write things down. I run the wiki for a company of 131 employees
in three nations. There is no other internal publication platform, just me. This puts me at the right hand
of the technical boss, because publishing is her need for governance. There's nothing propagandistic about the job, though. Though recently I said I had in fact "punched up" the profile of her hot button issue, and honestly I think I did it exceptionally right, and she re-wrote my core 3 lines, just slightly, and told employees of India to read it and do it!

Last week I re-did the front page of the wiki, fish in a barrel! it was garbage before! couldn't find anything. now it reflects the priorities and informantion needz of the company. There were a few ripples and surprises, which are delicious feedback for me, but only one person subtly freaked out briefly I think. CHANGE? OMG CHANGE! WHERE TO CLICK NOW?!?!! Now I shuffle the links on teh front page based on ongoing observation of people's use cases. If you can't find it, what's the point? Now I find most everything in two well-written text clicks. Improved. When I found it it was a freakin mess. Fish in a barrel.

They recently issued me a camera called Flip that Kicks Ass sorta, up to 2 hours record with fine audio and video. now I attend whiteboard architectural meetings with it, and later listen again to the recording, while writing based on what I hear, stopping and starting. this works! today this resulted in like 20 little changes at least to existing writing on their wiki. their core product is spooky in its design, and is an opaque nut to crack, but i do feel like listening carefully has revealed some of its internal contours. anyway, that's my top priority, even though it's fucking hard.

I have a number of tactics for finding work each day. I monitor every email feed about anything, automated reports of things crashing, people discussing ongoing work and issues. If someone says "x did foo" then I know not only the fact that x did foo, but that x exists, and foo can happen to x. etc. i do random keyword searches that i hear in conversation, and open many windows and try to make sense of what i find. i watch the wiki check-ins from other people I see each day, and beat new and old words with the same hammer. The writing takes many forms, including Formatting Crap, and using phrases like You can suck dick. To suck dick, follow these steps: It's a form of prose I learned from editors. I finish numbered lists. I add a single period. I tweak the width of a diagram. But really I focus on value. I like killing pages, combining them, cross-linking. I like when I collapse different sources into one. I like when I get to make a useful diagram. My diagrams are so much better than everyone else's. Sometimes I re-do theirs, and my new ones are twice as good. It's just one of my many gifts.

They issued me a lovely couch and table, where I munch sunflower seeds, drink cold tea from a wine jug, and write. I print, mark up prints, and track Hundreds Of Clues, navigating their organization and trying to extend what we know about it. I occasionally publish awesome diagrams. I gathered many of these to a brick wall behind my couch, where I invite review. The couch was genius because people come and lay on it, where I feed them and expose them to my work on the wall. Often I'm trafficking in the work of many over many years, and delivering the right words to the right person at the right time. I get to throw 90% of the company's words around and it turns me on.

There's even a fine coffee shop right in the building on the first floor.

The company hired 3 database experts to fix their shit, and me to write it down. They are a data company, but in their history, they didn't really understand that part. So now 3 new people with exceptional skills and experience are re-doing it the right way. Writing for them is my top priority, but it doesn't come up as much as I wish. With this cool camera I have more hope for that central goal. I do expose them to existing information a lot, and they are thankful, even if it feels incomplete to me.

Everyone I work with treats me nicely, though the work gets hard and crazy. We all work in a big room. My office occupies half of it, and the eight of them occupy the other half.

They have issued me a desktop-quality laptop with a large screen, long battery life, and docking station, and it drives my 24" monitor under the desk. I detatch from the dock once or twice a day. I am the only person using a computer through every meeting (except the "scrum master" who runs the big video). It's corporate culture, I suppose, and the people who work there are passionate and fun-loving. They have a DO NOT ERASE section of the whiteboard that tallies:

* HR Violation
* TMI
* SMACKDOWNS

There are little tick marks in each box. DO NOT ERASE.

Recently they restructured the company, keeping the most able and critical staff. This caused substantial risk to operation systems. I AIN'T JOKIN. They've spent a month in morbid service to the data collection needs of major bizness interests. They have successfully re-structured and the future looks brighter by the day. During this time I got many "fish in barrel" tasks because all of their error-prone systems needed straightforward maintenance information gathered and presented. I borrowed a lot of words but really I added a whole stabilizing structure on their product which occasionally saved the day and continues to do so.

The CEO is not funny, and I get tired of him. He tries to be funny but fails. He joked that I wasn't "laying down on the job" this time. I was sitting up in the couch, whereas I do typically like working laying down. This is really not the matter he's fixated it to be, but it dominates every communication he has with me. I find it and him strange. Ok, "layin down on the job" is kinda funny from CEO-land, makin the joke, but from guy talking to me land it's not funny. Get to know me, dork. That's the problem there.

I hope to live through the end of the year, and in that life, I hope to keep this job, because I do get wide berth and a sweet office of people. Tomorrow, near noon, pizza will be served. All you want pizza. Can you feel that? Feel it. That's love.

Today at lunch I met a vegetarian and we talked about food and health. We went to a fast-service line diner where the boss is a bit like Soup Nazi. I enjoyed pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, plus green beans.

My internet at home is basically broken and I am trying to remember how little this matters. I should ride my bike in the rain. I miss all you poets.

"Possession of child pornography does not lead to child abuse. That has never been demonstrated scientifically; in fact, the opposite is likely true."

Possession of child pornography likely leads to... child love? What do you think he means? Post to sfdrama?

Ate an awesome salad and drank wine. Watching Robin Hood with Kevin Cosner. It doesn't get any better than this.

Word of the work/art of my friend Michael Cleaver has been published:

Adam worked with local bike manufacturer
Michael Cleaver of Cleaver Bikes
in West Oakland to build the Dutchstyle
work bike. Adam intends to show
that his cargo bike is an integral part of
the brewery. “We want to show people
that if a local brewery can be delivering
kegs, what could other people be
doing? I hope when people see our
cargo bike bopping
around town it is not
only going to make them
chuckle a little to see a
bike that can carry two
kegs, but also open up a
new way of thinking.”

... check out the Cleaver Cargo Bike...

Ok, financial fuck-all:

See these bills!
$500 my tenant needed heat and electrical wiring fixed and now i owe him
$350 6 massages, paid in advance
$240 for Emily's birthday
$200 due for phone
$150 for just fuck-all this weekend apparently
$100 or so for Windows 7
$50 for marijuana
$40 for sushi with bill
$30 for wifi gadgets
$20 more wifi client hardware
$12 owed for lunch today

This is a fucking lot of money spent just this last week.

Joel Salatin is an important person.

Someone just experienced road rage towards me. I was driving up the Ave when some black Caravan-type thing with heavily tinted windows began entering the roadway from a parked position. I don't have to yield, do I?

Of course not. They do. So I inch forward with traffic. And they honk? Just stop. Don't honk! Stop your car! But they keep inching forward. Because, you know, they're a big black truck, let them in, right? But I decline, and the driver realizes that his pretty shiny black truck would face a lot more damage than my 1983 paint-flaked and moddled metal Honda. Go ahead... enter the roadway.

So he lets me pass (as required by law), really he just chickened out on his bully behavior, but he's not happy about it, and gets behind me and flips his brights on. I lock my door, waiting patiently at the light. I don't step out of the car to say, "You are obligated to yield when entering the roadway." What would be the point? To risk my well-being? He seemed to follow me a block and then turned down his dick lights and turned off at an intersection.

I have a tendancy to find the biggest bully in a group and have a showdown. Often it happens incredibly fast, like it did here. It's an occasional theme in my life.

I had a whole post here but LJ ate it. This morn i trusted its cache even though I'd been offline since midnight. (I have weak wifi in trickles.)

I've finally agreed that the Wall Street Journal is slightly better when stolen from the Man.

I feel kind of borderline, and I can't find my bicycle helmet. But some stuff's going ok. It's raining but it's not that cold. My shoulder feels ok. I kind of want to go to the cafe' and read for an hour. I feel stuck in the mud and sort of has-been-y sometimes. At least I don't have terrible headaches or a death sentence. And I can read.

http://www.awomanisnotapreexistingcondition.com/

See ermac's Windows 7 video!

Twelve years ago I was struck down by the Plague which bit off the head of the 20th century and spat it into a medical waste container. I lost many friends, lovers and the better part of my eyesight. Friends, to put it gently, I was eating turd pie and asking for seconds.

Then Slack entered my life.

I applied for SSDI and after some memorable epistolary battles wih the slope-headed government droids whose job it is to keep public hands off the government stash,I was awarded a monthly amount which is keeping me alive. I have enough to pay rent, sparks, phone and Internet and a little left over for pho and sushi every month. I have written one book and am in the middle of my second, and one day I will have a literary career, as the current book is going to be print Godzilla. Then I will come back here and get you all coupons for ten percent off the sale price.

I saw a movie about Hugo Chavez, a Frontline documentary. You should watch this movie. Watch when the people who are his "government" are explained. The guy does a 3+ hour television show every week where he appoints "staff" and then calls them out. He'll get mad at his neighbor, and tell the general to move troops because of it. On live television. Freak!

Watch this movie: Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America's Greatest Threat

For blacks, being baby-faced meant earning more money, the study found, whereas white CEOs earned less money if they were baby-faced.

Another week in the goat's ass. Hustle up, go to work, get it done, and stfu! AND MUST CONTAIN THE RAGE VIRUS.

...Refined sugar, by some, is called a drug, because in the refining process everything of food value has been removed except the carbohydrates-pure calories, without vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, enzymes or any of the other elements that make up food. Many nutrition experts say that white sugar is extremely harmful, possibly as harmful as a drug, especially in the quantities consumed by the present-day American.

>> No, it's not a drug. It's a poison.


horosha


My workplace is dramatic, kinda. Millions of bits flying around rather shakily. Here's drama from my workplace. I've been told the company where I work has "extra helpings of drama" and here's an example: Former employee of company writes:

I'm now working for one of QL2's largest clients in a directorship role. QL2 will soon be losing one of its largest clients, as I've made a point of warning everyone involved with that contract (after tracking down the right folks in Accounts Payable) that QL2 is a fraudulent company. It is the right thing to do. How can I ethically allow my new employer to do business with a company that openly told me, in a meeting, that they had no plan to develop product for a number of clients that had already made payments? That is fraud.

Whatever.

A recent Brookings Institute analysis (found via Barrons) demonstrates persuasively(?) that the $8,000 subsidy actually costs $43,000 per extra house sold; worse yet, the new $15k tax credit will ultimately cost $292,000 per home.

Ouch!

Smart Choices, which approved of Fruit Loops, is dead.

Finally, the 80% APR credit card I've been looking for.

A runaway’s relationship with a pimp does not occur by accident. It takes work.



Juveniles fetch higher prices from clients and are far easier to manipulate. "With the young girls, you promise them heaven, they’ll follow you to hell," said Harvey Washington, a pimp.

Listen to this insurance primer! Learn the down and dirty. Hell yeah we should be involved in cost decisions.

R.I.P. Tabitha Versace Starr.

I don't admire peoples' balls when they base their opinions merely on the writings of Bronze-age tribesmen.

Anyway, it's more evident when it comes to straight women hanging out with gay men AKA the fruit fly syndrome: straight girls get their boobs grabbed, gawked at, butts slapped, and participate in various other debauchery with the gays. It's safe because the gays have no intent on taking it further and it boosts low self-esteem for women that need it. They go home with the satisfaction of getting their self-esteem boost without the guilt.

the people who are uninvolved and just getting in on the action because it looks like fun, or suggesting that she tried to give herself a drug induced abortion, or that Nathan has fetal alcohol syndrome or any of the other shit that people are saying that are untrue and irrelevant are not serving any good purpose other than to incite more drama and slander.






How can we be made so willingly to acquiesce for hours daily to the illusion that the people on the TV don't know they're being looked at, to the fantasy that we're transcending privacy and feeding on unself-conscious human activity? There might be lots of reasons why these unrealities are so swallowable, but the big one is that the performers behind the two layers of glass are—varying degrees of Thespian talent aside—absolute geniuses at seeming unwatched. Now, seeming unwatched in front of a TV camera is a genuine art. Take a look at how civilians act when a TV camera is pointed at them: they simply spaz out, or else go all rigor mortis. Even PR people and politicians are, camera-wise, civilians.


"If Oracle is allowed to acquire MySQL, it will predictably limit the development of the functionality and performance of the MySQL software platform, leading to profound harm to those who use MySQL software to power applications," they wrote.

I THOUGHT YOU COULD JUST TAKE THE SOURCE CODE AND SHUT UP. HOW IS IT THAT ANY COMPANY CAN BUY MYSQL CONTROL? i must not understand something.



valdelane

Why should healthcare be a right anyway?




litio



This speech has been transcribed. Excerpt:

Good morning, Committee. My name is Phillip Spooner and I live at 5 Graham Street in Biddeford. I am 86 years old and a lifetime Republican and an active VFW chaplain. I still serve three hospitals and two nursing homes and I also serve Meals on Wheels for 28 years. My wife of 54 years, Jenny, died in 1997. Together we had four children, including the one gay son. All four of our boys were in the service. I was born on a potato farm north of Caribou and Perham, where I was raised to believe that all men are created equal and I've never forgotten that. I served in the U.S. Army, 1942-1945, in the First Army, as a medic and an ambulance driver. I worked with every outfit over there, including Patton's Third Army. I saw action in all five major battles in Europe, and including the Battle of the Bulge. My unit was awarded Presidential Citations for transporting more patients with fewer accidents than any other [inaudible] I was in the liberation of Paris. After the war I carried POW's back from Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and also hauled hundreds of injured Germans back to Germany.

I am here today because of a conversation I had last June when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, "Do you believe in equal, equality for gay and lesbian people?" I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?" I haven't seen much, so much blood and guts, so much suffering, much sacrifice. For what? For freedom and equality. These are the values that give America a great nation, one worth dying for.

In Sweden, there is a place that is respectful of women’s love, but with a rule that men cannot enter. This is Chako Paul City. The town holds around 25,000 women, all from around Europe. If men transgress into the forbidden city, they will be beaten half to death. The citizens of Chako Paul are mostly engaged in the forest industry, because of such many of the women wear thick belts full of woodworking equipment. Some go into nearby cities to work and return to Chako Paul by night. Chako Paul’s tourism industry is increasingly prosperous, with hotels and restaurants everywhere that cater specifically to women around the world.

doctor explains why sugar and high fructose corn syrup are poison. this is the sort of thing i think you're a god damn fool if you won't watch completely.

how to be a mermaid.

Emily did accounting homework while Chloe and I enjoyed bike shopping (but didn't get one) and just exploring up woodsy bike trails around UW. Three or four times today she understood something I explained, and gave me a big hug for it. Like, I explained a few things about letters, and she understood, and it makes her so happy that she just pauses to hug me. I also explained why we weren't doing exactly what she wanted, because we got to do some of it and then had to move on, and I explained that she would need to learn to accept this, which made her super-mad, until I said she doesn't have to learn to accept it right away. Having some wiggle room pleased her a great deal, and she said, I swear, "John, I love you to death." When I can explain something she's trying to understand, and the idea gets through to her, perhaps it makes her feel connected, like she really can make it in this krazy world. She loves bike riding and it's a chance for us to explore, sing, and converse. There's no question who is in charge (me, obviously) and yet it's all quite fun, riding through empty parking lots and all around trails. I try to keep her cool at the bar in the cafe' where we eat grilled cheese. She can't get that crazy at the bar because she's up so damn high on a stool and it's like gymnastics just to stay safe up there. She didn't get that crazy today. We spent some time singing loudly. I did express that occasionally she's just raving like a bully and not singing at all. She seemed to understand this critique. She likes to yell and take over the airwaves but what's the harmony in that? In the evening, we played with hardly no acrimony, on the bean bag, playing catch, hiding under blankets, watching baby goats, and being carried/swung/lifted in the bucket. For a while we sat in the storm with her in the bucket outside. She likes being carried around in a bucket. We also pushed her in a shopping cart.

Emily does not have inoperable brain cancer. She just has a common and typically harmless scarring condition caused by her previous chemotherapy.

Michael Moore I luv u but u r a big fat socialist. His position has merit in light of bank behavior, but I think smart capital, as usual, came out on top. Capital must be precious, and when it is not, it is lost.

I still think the first guy is a jerk and would be a sleazy mayor. The second guy is genuine. But really with the second guy we'd have Seattle's analysis paralysis again. That's no reason to elect a dickweed.

Please don't vote in favor of Eyman's latest piece of shit.



I met a guy in Bauhaus and we've kept in touch... this is a recumbant computing platform he's building. Like it?

At 4:30am Friday morning Pacific coast time, NASA is blasting some bomb or something into the southern portion of the moon, and then flying a probe through the plume, which should be visible to naked eyes. I guess you can tune in.

Bing is for academics, while Google gets right to the point.

I've been eating well and recovering from my cold.

My massage guy explained why his treatment often leads to permanent relief. What is permanent relief worth? I'm going to pour some money on the issue. He's two blocks from my house!

Do you have Oxford Healthcare medical insurance? You need to be aware how they do business! Toward my own medical savings, I saved my $3k for the year, for a total balance of $8.7k. What's more American than finding a way to tell insurance companies to FOAD most of the time?

I'm also $3.2k in debt (to myself). I need a roommate eventually. So I've been cleaning my house, really deep hopefully, really soon hopefully.

I love to hate African dictators.

My car got 4 new tires and new wiper blades installed for $280. One of my tires had a gash in it. You could peer in and see the metal bands, and it cut through them to some internal... something. It wasn't an innertube, he told me, cuz tires don't have those anymore. I got my money's worth. The place is also two blocks away.

I thought it was a very clever idea. I would write stories on-the-fly. I made a little sign and wore a nifty outfit. I set up shop with my word processor and little printer, to sell stories.

The first guy walks up and asks "What are you doing here?"

"I'm writing custom stories," I tell him. "You can be the star in your story, you can say whether you live or die or 'other,' you can suggest a location in time or space, and if you have a favorite story you want me to swim in sync with, I'll write you up a story."

He snickered, and said "How you going to get it to me after the film festival?"

I said "I'll have in in about an hour. I'll write it here and print it here."

He seemed surprised by this, and I think he didn't believe me. Nevertheless, he fished his wallet out. "Okay," he said. "Count me in."

About 90 minutes later, I handed him his story.

By the end of the weekend, I had written eleven stories, each over 1000 words or so. By this afternoon, I think my current total is 15.

I need a bigger sign for next year.

Straight-edge through nuclear war - these guys are determined.

African tribe with outrageous fashion sense.

... circumstantial evidence — official buying of U.S. assets runs at only half of the pace of global reserve accumulation — suggests that diversification has accelerated since June.” - i was in US dollars 100% since selling out of bonds and equities, but this week i bought gold and euros.

The "hard money" folks (and many "fiat money" folks) are wrong because they are attached to an ideology that has been subsumed in ALL credit-based monetary systems - an anachronistic ideology that they have elevated to idolatry yet is in fact FALSE.

I support Senator Frankin on this matter. Sometimes I'm just in the word-spreading business.

"why do doctors and hospitals bill for high dollar amounts when they know practically no one pays this amount?" - Because insurance companies force them. I've heard everything.

Staying alive by instinct. Just ate fine salad. My house is starting to look cleaner.